The present invention relates generally to the production of printed products and more particularly to the production of small-sized, printed products which require folding, gluing and stacking, such as small-sized coupons intended for inclusion in food packages, for example.
Printed products are conventionally produced on a continuous line which starts with a roll of paper at an upstream end and dispenses individual pieces of printed product at a downstream end. Mechanical steps, such as slitting the roll into ribbons, folding a ribbon, applying glue to a ribbon, and transversely cutting a ribbon into individual pieces are conventionally performed on the continuous line.
It is oftentimes desirable to deliver the individual pieces of printed product, at the downstream end of a continuous line, as a row of pieces in straight, aligned, shingled relation. This facilitates handling and packaging of the pieces of printed product for delivery to a user. Printed products having a relatively large dimension in a downstream direction (i.e., from leading edge to trailing edge of the printed product), e.g., about 51/4 in. (13.3 cm) or more, can be manufactured and delivered in this manner with conventional equipment.
Such conventional equipment includes a rotary cutter which receives a continuous ribbon containing a multiplicity of connected printed products, usually folded and glued. The rotary cutter cuts the ribbon transversely into a series of individual pieces of printed product. Located immediately downstream of the rotary cutter are a series of driven rollers which receive each individual piece of the printed product from the rotary cutter and deliver it to a conveyor located immediately downstream of the driven rollers. Located above the driven rollers are a plurality of idler wheels which are urged downwardly to engage the top surface of the printed product as it is moved downstream by the driven rollers.
The conveyor located downstream of the driven rollers is operated at a slower speed than the driven rollers so that, as the individual pieces of printed product are delivered from the driven rollers onto the conveyor, they are automatically arranged in shingled relation, in a row. In order for printed products to be effectively arranged in shingled relation on the conveyor, the printed products must not undergo deflection between the time they leave the rotary cutter and the time they arrive at the conveyor. Deflection occurs when the leading or downstream edge of a printed product moves above or below a plane defined by the tops of the driven rollers, or when the printed product is angled to one side of a straight line extending in a downstream direction along the rollers.
With relatively large-sized printed products, such as those described three paragraphs above, deflection is not a problem when employing the conventional equipment described in the preceding two paragraphs. However, with relatively small-sized printed products, such as coupons which are to be included within a food package, that equipment cannot deliver the individual pieces of small-sized, printed product to the conveyor consistently without deflection. A typical example of such a small-sized printed product is one having dimensions of about 2-3/16 in. (5.6 cm) from leading edge to trailing edge and about 2 in. (5.1 cm) transverse thereto. The user or customer inserts these individual coupons into food packages such as cereal boxes or snack packages.
There have been two conventional procedures for handling the small-sized printed products described in the preceding paragraph. One procedure has been to dispense the individual pieces of folded, glued, printed product from the rotary cutter directly into a large-sized container, without any attempt at orderly arrangement. This is known as so-called "fluff" packaging, but this procedure cannot be employed when the user requires that the product be delivered in an orderly arrangement.
Another procedure is laborious and involves a very substantial amount of manual handling. In this other procedure, folding, gluing and transverse cutting operations are not performed on the continuous line. Instead, large sheets, each containing a multitude of connected pieces (e.g., 32 pieces) of unfolded, unglued, printed product are produced on the continuous line. These large sheets are then transferred to a first processing apparatus which cuts each large sheet into a large number of smaller parts, e.g., 16 parts, each containing 2 pieces of printed product connected together. Each of these parts is then transferred to a second processing apparatus which applies a spot of glue to each of the 2 pieces on a part, folds each part (e.g., 2 folds to fold the part into thirds), and then cuts each part into 2 individual pieces. The individual pieces, which have been glued, folded and cut when they emerge from the second apparatus, also emerge arranged in an orderly fashion to permit packaging in rows in a container for shipment to a user.
Before each of the two transferring steps described in the preceding paragraph, the incompletely processed printed products are manually loaded on pallets. At each of the two processing apparatuses, the incompletely processed printed products are manually removed from the pallets and manually introduced into the respective apparatus for processing.
When coupons are to be included in food packages, it is desirable, from a sanitary standpoint, to minimize the amount of manual handling to which these coupons are subjected during the manufacturing process. The above-described batch procedure for producing an orderly arrangement of such coupons employs a relatively large number of manually handling steps, and that is undesirable.
Coupons have a monetary value. Unless strict security is maintained, theft can be a problem. When a number of individual processing operations are employed at separate processing stations, as in the batch procedure described above, a backlog of partially processed coupons can accumulate at each of the individual stations, awaiting processing; and this exacerbates the theft problems. Typically, there are stacks of uncompleted coupons, in various stages of processing, sitting on pallets at each of the processing stations.
Another drawback to the conventional, multi-operation, batch procedure described above is the relatively limited production rate available therewith, e.g., 500,000-600,000 pieces in a 24-hour period.